FAT16 vs. FAT32

['chris']

hi

I'd like to install live USB system.
Which file system is faster FAT16 or FAT32, after installing and booting from USB stick?
What are advantages and disadvantages?

[Sheldon Smith]

try http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=usb+fat16+vs+fat32&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS366US366&ie=UTF-8&aq=4&oq=usb+fat16+

[P Muralidhar Kini · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

>> Which file system is faster FAT16 or FAT32, after installing and booting
>> from USB stick?
FAT32 uses space effectively resulting in efficient use of the disk space.
It also overcomes the 2GB limit with FAT16. There may not be much of a
significant performance benefit of FAT32 when compared to FAT16.

>> What are advantages and disadvantages?
Check the following link -
* FAT16 vs. FAT32
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc940351.aspx

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Murali

[P Muralidhar Kini]

Hi Chris,

How did the installation/boot from usb stick go about?

Regards,
Murali

['chris']

It was installed on linux debian using live-helper:

LH_BINARY_FILESYSTEM="fat16"

or

LH_BINARY_FILESYSTEM="fat32"

[Lucifer Megacruel]

Hi Chris,

It does not matter that as much basically. The size of the File Allocation table entry .

Eg Fat 16 used in small disks basically ( < 512 MB), the size = 16 , so it the total number of files or entries possible = 2^16 = 65,536 entries . So max file size possible := cluster_size * 65,536 .

But in Fat32 it theoretically becomes
max file size possible := cluster_size * 2 ^32.


But implementation wise fat16 and fat32 are more or else the same. There should not be much difference in performance other than the max file size it can address.

You can read the FAT specification to gain more knowledge.

http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/misc/fatgen103.pdf

Truly Evil
Lucifer Megacruel